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The recent International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy drew 2,000+ journalists, including 526 speakers, for four days of conversation about what’s next for our field. It was one of the most vibrant conferences I’ve attended.
I spoke on a panel about how journalism training evolves when AI does entry-level work. I also attended 15 other sessions. Five ideas stuck with me, each about how journalism can be more human, more sustainable, and more inventive, even as the industry contracts.
Live Journalism Resonates
Madrid-based Diario Vivo puts journalists and ordinary people on stage to tell personal stories. Nothing is recorded. It’s pure human storytelling.
Audiences don’t know what stories they’ll hear when they arrive at a show. Founder Vanessa Rousselot says the format is designed to make people laugh and cry and to restore trust between journalists and the public. Diario Vivo began in 2017 with 100 people in the audience. Now they sell out 1,000-seat venues. More than 25,000 people have seen their shows thus far, in various cities.
Correctiv, a German nonprofit newsroom, turns its investigations into theater performed by professional actors. Editor in chief Jean Peters says Correctiv is building a network of 50+ theaters across Europe to distribute journalistic productions. Correctiv’s publisher, David Schraven, estimated that each two-hour theater performance is “equivalent to 3.6 million seconds spent on TikTok, but with a much bigger impact.”
These projects follow in the tradition of Pop-Up Magazine, which launched in California in 2009 and hosted sold-out shows for tens of thousands of people around North America until closing in 2023 after the pandemic devastated their business. Diario Vivo, Correctiv and others are now reviving the live journalism movement.
